Read on Twitter
Researchers tested a tool to confuse Google’s ad network. This is a thread about how it works and why you should use it.
We’ve all been there by now: surfing the web and bumping into ads that sound a little too personal. How did they know I was thinking about joining a gym? Or changing careers? Or that I need a loan?
No, Google can’t read your mind. But it can read your search history and a lot of your web browsing, too.
Google has an enormous amount of data about its users, and it uses that data to make an unimaginable amount of money from advertising: over $120 billion a year. 
The company runs a vast profiling machine, fitting people into categories that say who they are, what they’re worth, and how they’re expected to act. https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/
Google isn’t just organizing the world’s information; it’s sorting the world’s populations. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/07/06/110198/probing-the-dark-side-of-googles-ad-targeting-system/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1610056580
Many of the digital devices and platforms people use every day are built to make users transparent to the companies who want to predict, influence, and evaluate user behavior.
Lawmakers have not acted decisively to mitigate the major social costs of surveillance advertising. https://www.flowjournal.org/2019/02/the-devil-in-the-details/
Guerrilla tactics like the browser extension, AdNauseam, are all we’ve got right now to fight this invasive profiling. The tool automatically clicks on web ads to interfere with behavioral tracking and profiling. https://adnauseam.io/
Since it’s not possible to hide from Google’s surveillance, this guerrilla warfare approach introduces inaccurate or excessive information to confuse and ultimately sabotage it.
It’s like jamming radar by flooding it with false signals. And it’s adjustable.
It’s like jamming radar by flooding it with false signals. And it’s adjustable.
This isn’t a new idea and tool. What’s new are the results of a test to see if AdNauseam indeed works.
Spoiler alert: It does, most of the time. But as the experiment developed, it became about more than settling this narrow question.
The researchers wanted to try to understand what’s going on inside the black box of Google’s incredibly lucrative advertising sales platforms in a way that nobody else outside the company had ever done.
In this subscriber exclusive, @LJamesMcGuigan explains what they found and why AdNauseam is one of the better solutions we have to protest surveillance advertising, at least until regulators *finally* protect us from the surveillance of Big Tech. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015784/adsense-google-surveillance-adnauseam-obfuscation/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1610057096
